


Always Falling

by lalejandra



Category: lotrips
Genre: F/M, Hannah's 21 birthday, Weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-18
Updated: 2004-10-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 09:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16037300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Viggo quotes to Hannah from Neruda. Translated by Alastair Reid (my spanish is good, but not good enough to translate from colloquial Chilean, unfortunately)...El hombre dijo sí sin que supiera determinar de lo que se tratabaA man says yes without knowing how to decide even what the question isand thenY es así: nos vamos cayendoAnd that's how we are: we are always fallingBoth from "Emerging".





	Always Falling

Age ain't nothing but a number, that's what Hannah always said. Well, maybe not, but maybe she would, if she felt like it. And sometimes she did. She felt like she lived a whole fucking life, and now she was only just turning twenty-one. If the next twenty-one years were anything like the last ones, Hannah wasn't sure she'd survive. Twenty-one only marked that she could drink legally in the States, which didn't fucking matter -- who cared about that shit?

Kelly did. Kelly took her out for twenty-one hours of drinking and drugs. Hannah got bored after the first hour, and sat through the next twenty with what she hoped Kelly would interpret as patience. Lij showed up between hours four and six, gave her a couple of joints with Jamaican, got really trashed on vodka gimlets -- who even drank those anymore? -- and went home with some guy Hannah didn't know. Ew.

She smoked one of Lij's joints during hour seven, then pulled out her knitting, which she learned to bring along whenever Kelly wanted to do something -- after all, when Kelly wanted to do something, _she_ wanted to do it, and whatever anyone else wanted was ignored. It wasn't like she was a bad friend or anything -- she just wanted to do what she wanted to do. That was cool with Hannah; she made socks that were striped with pink and orange and had green heels and toes.

Kelly took the rest of the joints, ended up fucking one of the Olsen girls in the bathroom -- Hannah wished she cared, because that was good for weeks of teasing, at least, but Hannah couldn't tell those two apart, and they were both weird and skinny anyway. Kelly liked the skinny ones, which Hannah thought was gross.

Hannah left before she was supposed to, because Kelly started in with the fucking karaoke, which Hannah hated and refused to sit through. No one was supposed to sing "Stairway to Heaven" but the guys who recorded it, but Kelly would never learn.

When Hannah got home, she slept for like three days. Well, okay, like ten hours, so she ended up waking up just in time for lunch, which she ordered in. Pizza. Diet Coke. The perfect thing for a night after debauchery. Or, whatever, knitting.

Birthday gifts: her mother left her an IOU for 21 hugs. Cute. Zack sent her a card from his family, with 21 twenty-dollar bills held together with a paperclip. The Post It note affixed said, "21 cool things that I don't want to know you got, okay?" Also cute. Ah, genetics. Dom sent a box from Hawaii with shells and rocks and bits of string and little doodles and a piece of paper with a lipstick kiss and a bag of sand and a little vial of water. Clearly he had spent too much time with Viggo.

Like Hannah was anyone to talk.

Franka sent her three cds of European hip hop. Billy sent her -- ugh -- a can of Guinness. That must be a joke. There was a whole fucking pile of shit on the table, but there was nothing from Lij -- he couldn't possibly think that four joints, even with expensive weed inside, were an adequate birthday gift. What a fucking twat. And nothing from -- no, whatever, that didn't fucking matter.

She ate another slice of pizza, and resolve to do a cross-stitch of "When I became a woman, I put away childish things," and then changed her mind almost immediately, because Paul was always her least favorite of everyone -- and then changed her mind back, because she could stitch, underneath the line, "FUCK YOU, PAUL" which would be funny. But not, because then her mother would get upset and then Lij would yell at her for upsetting their mother, and then she'd yell at him for being gay, because if cussing out Biblical figures upset their mother, Lij fucking dudes upset her way way way more. And anyway, Hannah didn't wanna grow up, go to school, become a parrot, recite a rule, blah blah blah.

"If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up," she sang to herself, and then sang it again, louder, and then shouted it.

She danced the rest of the pizza over to the counter, where she wrapped it in tin foil, and then she danced it to the fridge, and then she bowed to her reflection in the windows.

"Are you channeling the gods?"

Hannah shrieked and turned, and there was Viggo at the door.

"Don't do that!" she said, and let out her breath.

"Good afternoon," he said, and held out a package.

She didn't move to take it. "Do you want some tea?" she asked. "I have the --"

"Yes," he said, and sat down at the table. She put some water on to boil. He put the package on the table. It was wrapped in yellow paper, and oddly misshapen and squishy.

"Uh, Viggo?" she said. "You didn't actually get me a kitten, did you? Because I was just joking when I said that I wanted a sleeping kitten for my birthday."

"No," he said. "I didn't get you a kitten." He didn't look at her, but stared out the window silently until she came over with two mugs of tea -- hers with lemon and cream, his with agave nectar and soy milk.

He took a sip and looked over at her. "You keep this in the house?"

Hannah shrugged. "Sometimes you come over. It's --" Sometimes you come over, like _never_. She stopped, took a sip of tea, looked at him from under her eyelashes. "It's only polite."

She was very careful not to overemphasize the word "polite" -- no need to be _mean_. Fucking dick.

"Thanks." He pushed the package toward her. "Go on."

She untied the string -- Billy'd shown her how to make those types of knots, too; she wanted to stick her tongue out at Viggo -- and unwrapped the squishiness.

"Wow," she said.

"It's a dress," he said.

"I got that." She looked up at him. "It's an Aksu? Jesus, Viggo, spend enough money?"

"I watched Bora Aksu's grandmother stitch this," he said to her.

"How'd you know my size?"

"I had one of your t-shirts from --" Now it was his turn to stop and sip. Stupid. Stupid. What a fucking _adult_. "Do you like it?"

"Yes." She brought the gauzy material up to her nose and sniffed. "It smells funny."

"Bora Aksu's grandmother lives in a small village in Turkey."

"When were you in Turkey?"

Viggo lifted a shoulder and then dropped it. "Whenever," he said.

"Uh-huh." She tried to refold the dress carefully, but the gauze slipped and slid. Finally, she just bunched it up and wrapped it back into the paper.

Viggo stared at her. She stared back.

"So," Hannah said. "How have you been?"

"Well." Viggo sipped his tea but kept his eyes trained on hers. She wished he'd make up his mind -- did he want her to say something or did he want to talk?

"Say something," she demanded. Her voice sounded raw, but that might have been all the cigarettes she smoked the night before. She leaned forward, over her mug, over her new dress. "Say what you came for."

"El hombre dijo s' sin que supiera determinar de lo que se trataba --" said Viggo, and put a hand over hers. His voice was raw too, and his mouth twisted a little, and the scar on his chin was very pale.

"The man -- determines -- speak _English_!" said Hannah, and pulled away. "God. With the fucking poetry all the fucking time. What do you want? No -- never fucking mind."

She pushed back from the table, but he caught her wrist, and pulled her to him, and buried his face in her stomach.

"Viggo, quit it. I'm sick of this shit. It's just _sex_ for chrissakes. We just _fucked_ ," she said, trying to sound as rude as possible. His shoulders shook -- crying?

No, laughing.

"I'm not confused, little sister," he said. "We're like --"

"We're _like_ ourselves," she said, annoyed. Probably if he was crying she'd be less annoyed, but laughing? Laughing at her? What fucking ever. Dick.

"Y es as': nos vamos cayendo," he said, and she scowled at him, and refused to touch his hair even though she wanted to. Bad Hannah: no touching. Jesus. Up close she could see all his wrinkles and pores. He was, like, old enough to be her father. What the fuck was wrong with her?

Better question: what the fuck was wrong with him?

"Don't say shit like that to me," she said. "You know I don't speak Spanish."

"I said, That's how we are, always falling." He twisted their fingers together. She pulled away. His hands were hot and rough and her fingers felt sore.

"Whatever," she replied. She needed a cigarette, like, stat. "I can quote shit to you, too -- how's this? I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. Or what about, I will not bow to this Ranger from the North, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship. Huh?"

His mouth twisted with a smile and he leaned up and kissed her, fucking finally, the first time in years that their lips touched, and his were soft, and his cheeks were scrapey with stubble under her hands and something in her stomach fluttered.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Viggo quotes to Hannah from Neruda. Translated by Alastair Reid (my spanish is good, but not good enough to translate from colloquial Chilean, unfortunately)...
> 
>  _El hombre dijo sí sin que supiera determinar de lo que se trataba_  
>  A man says yes without knowing how to decide even what the question is
> 
> and then
> 
>  _Y es así: nos vamos cayendo_  
>  And that's how we are: we are always falling
> 
> Both from "Emerging".


End file.
